Can I use Creative Commons images as TV wallpaper, and how do I attribute them?

Creative Commons is a standardized set of licenses that creators attach to their work to define how others may use it. Each license is a legal document, but the shorthand codes tell you most of what you need to know.

CC0 (pronounced "CC Zero") is a public-domain dedication. The creator has waived all rights, so you can use the image for any purpose with no attribution required. Many institutional open-access programs, including the Smithsonian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, release public-domain works under CC0.

CC BY requires attribution: you must name the creator and identify the source and license. Beyond that, any use is permitted, including commercial use.

CC BY-SA adds a share-alike condition. If you adapt or build on the image, your derived work must carry the same license. For simple display as wallpaper (no modification), this condition does not come into play.

CC BY-ND adds a no-derivatives condition. You cannot alter the image, but displaying it as wallpaper does not count as creating a derivative work.

CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA, and CC BY-NC-ND add a non-commercial restriction. These images may not be used for commercial purposes. Personal home display is non-commercial, so these variants are still fine for a living-room screensaver.

Public domain (expired copyright or works produced by the U.S. federal government) carries no license at all. No conditions, no attribution required.

All Creative Commons licenses, including the NC variants, permit personal non-commercial use. Displaying images as a screensaver or wallpaper in your home is personal, non-commercial use. You do not need to avoid NC-licensed images for a home TV or bedroom monitor.

Commercial use is a different matter. If you are running a display in a hotel lobby, a retail store, or a restaurant, or if you are selling a product that incorporates the images, you must check whether the image carries an NC restriction. NC images are off-limits for those contexts. Images licensed CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA, or CC BY-ND do permit commercial use, subject to their other conditions.

When in doubt about a specific use, read the full license text linked from the image page. Creative Commons publishes plain-language summaries for each license at creativecommons.org.

• Home screensaver or wallpaper: all CC licenses (including NC) are permitted
• Business lobby display or commercial product: NC images are not permitted; use CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA, or CC BY-ND only
• Adapted or modified use: check ND restrictions; avoid CC BY-ND and CC BY-NC-ND if you plan to alter the image

The CC BY license (and its BY-SA and BY-ND variants) requires attribution. Creative Commons recommends what is sometimes called the TASL format: Title, Author, Source, and License.

A complete attribution looks something like this: "Eagle Nebula (Pillars of Creation)" by NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team, via hubblesite.org, licensed under CC BY 4.0. For a screensaver or on-screen display, showing the creator name, the originating institution or URL, and the license code is generally accepted as sufficient.

Attribution does not have to be on the same screen at the exact moment the image is visible, but it should be reasonably accessible. For a rotating screensaver, showing the credit on screen at the time each image appears is the standard practice and is considered sufficient for home display under CC BY.

If you are printing the image or embedding it in a published work, place the attribution directly adjacent to the image or in a clearly labeled credits section.

• Title: the name of the specific image (omit if no title is given)
• Author: the creator or photographer
• Source: the URL or institution where you found it
• License: the license code and version, such as CC BY 4.0

FrameSaver curates open-access and Creative Commons imagery from sources including observatory archives (ESO, NOIRLab, Hubble, Webb), the National Park Service, and Openverse. All images in the FrameSaver library carry a commercial-friendly license: either a public-domain dedication, CC0, or a CC BY variant.

Every time an image appears in the screensaver, FrameSaver displays a credit overlay at the bottom of the screen for approximately 15 seconds. The overlay includes the creator name, the source, and the license. After 15 seconds it fades out so the image fills the screen.

This automatic overlay satisfies the CC BY attribution requirement for home display. You do not need to track, write, or display credits yourself. The system handles it as part of normal playback.

For personal home use, this means you can run a FrameSaver screensaver on any TV or browser without any extra steps to stay compliant with the licenses of the images you are displaying.

Several sources offer large libraries of CC-licensed images at the resolution needed for TV wallpaper (ideally 1920 x 1080 pixels or larger for HD, 3840 x 2160 for 4K).

Openverse (openverse.org) is a search engine maintained by the WordPress Foundation that indexes CC-licensed images from Flickr, Wikimedia Commons, and other sources. You can filter by license type and minimum image size.

Wikimedia Commons (commons.wikimedia.org) hosts tens of millions of freely licensed media files. The "Featured Pictures" and "Quality Images" categories are community-vetted for technical quality and are good starting points for high-resolution wallpaper candidates.

Observatory archives from ESO, NOIRLab, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the James Webb Space Telescope publish astronomy images under CC BY at resolutions well above 4K. These are available directly from each institution and are among the most visually striking options for TV art.

The National Park Service (nps.gov/media) publishes photographs of national park landscapes under a public-domain dedication, making them usable with no conditions at all.